Rochdale Maker's Mile

Based in Rochdale, a town on the outskirts of Greater Manchester and the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, the Maker’s Mile Live Project is a series of visionary proposals, briefs and design components. The project addresses issues surrounding existing wayfinding, creative networks, asset management and event programming leading from Rochdale Train Station to the Town Centre. 

Building upon work already formatted by the Rochdale Creative Consortium and external consultants – the Maker’s Mile hopes to complement and situate itself within existing work and demonstrate a strong set of contemporary cooperative values that can be expressed in further development work. These are collaboration, democracy, and co-design.

Working in close collaboration with local artists, the Rochdale community, and ‘We Are Local’ through a series of arts-based public engagement and presentation events on Rochdale Riverside, we were able to bridge the gap between existing heritage assets and assets informed by the Rochdale community through co-production and storytelling. Forming a backdrop and focus for our design response and vision.  

Our design response came in the form of a reimagined identity pack and a collection of small moves that were achievable for the creative consortium to realise with the help of consultants, local artists and the community. It was essential for us not to provide resolved and polished design components but rather initial concepts that would encourage local artists and the public to take creative ownership over and progress. 

These design responses took three fundamental communication forms:

1. A series of four zines that act as pocket-sized accessible, colourful and informal items to describe and promote our small move designs to the public and the wider creative scene beyond Rochdale.

2. A series of accessible toolkits, which exist as easy-to-use points of reference for the council, that can be exchanged between groups when commissioning further design work or formatting future briefs.

3. An identity kit which includes a series of branding, website, and social media mock-ups and guidelines to encourage future ownership by the creative community in Rochdale.  

The work developed across the Live Project will help to structure and feed into long-term plans to establish and connect the creative identity of Rochdale both physically and digitally while sowing the seeds for greater connection between the council, creatives, and locals.

Instagram: @rochdale.makers.mile.lp

Credits

Student Team: 

Max Bridge, Joseph Deakin, Eloisa De Gracia, Evie Dixon, Lingxian Gao, Andreea Gheorghe, Izzie Grandcourt, Jingyu Guo, Jack Hodges, Yaryna Khomyn, Dominic Wong, Wan Yee Yeow, Qifan Zhao

Mentor:

John Sampson